Back to Memphis

Thursday, May 5 - Happy Cinco De Mayo Day.  We had tacos for dinner in honor of the occasion. 

We got up to another sunny day, yeah!   It was a beautiful morning, and we spent a couple hours with the map and computer this morning trying to figure out how to get across the flooded areas and the Mississippi River; I-40 in Arkansas was closed between Memphis and Little Rock, with a 100+ mile detour, and the Caruthersville, Missouri bridge crossing would put us right in the flooded area in north Arkansas.  I figure our Mobile Hot Spot for MiFi probably paid for itself this morning, since I was able to get on web sites about the Arkansas road closure, which a trucker had posted.  We finally decided on a route through central Tennessee and Mississippi, maybe crossing the river at Vicksburg, but Joe changed his mind mid-stream, and we ended up on the southeast edge of Memphis tonight (I practically wore out the Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi pages on the atlas).  So we'll check again in the morning and decide whether we move on, or sit in Memphis for another day or so.

We drove through beautiful country coming down through Kentucky and central Tennessee.  Our route took us past Murray State University, and the town and university both were very pretty.  A classmate of Joe's, Johnny Buchhorn, attended Murray State, so it was interesting to see the school, although we only saw what we could see from the highway.

We pulled off the road in McKenzie, Tennessee for lunch, and Joe walked across the road to a grocery store for a tomato.  A Dairy Queen happened to be next to the grocery store, so he bought a treat for me.  While he was doing his errands, I heard a clip-clopping outside, and an Amish horse and buggy was going by on the road, and then it pulled into the grocery store.  He tied up the horse to the hitching post, then went inside for his groceries.

Driving on southwest on US 79 through Tennessee, we saw a lot of  damage from the terrible storms that came through Alabama, Tennessee and the whole south a couple of weeks ago.  We saw lots of limbs piled up, big old trees uprooted, and some houses that roofs were being replaced on.  This went on for several miles, especially around Milan.

The price of gas is also of great interest to us.  We paid $3.869 yesterday in Kentucky; today we saw gas as low as $3.689 (of course we didn't need any gas today, so we'll wait for the $4.00 stuff tomorrow).  Although tonight's news reported that the price of gas should be coming down, maybe as low as $3.50 -  our new bargain price, I guess. 

Our next excitement was driving through Humboldt, which acclaims itself as the strawberry capital of Tennessee.   And lo and behold, the festival is May 1-7.  We drove straight through town, looking for strawberries.  Joe said he would stay here overnight, he would even bring money for berries, but we never did see any for sale.  We suddenly found ourselves on main street, and the streets were lined with lawn chairs for a parade.  I noticed that we were the only ones on the street, so Joe started giving the parade wave just in case we were leading it.  But we never saw the parade either, so I guess we missed it.

We ended our day on the northeast edge of Memphis about 4:30, having driven 168 miles today (we made 174 miles yesterday).  We really lucked into a neat little campground, right behind a mobile home park, with a little fishing pond with a dock.  We sat down there in the sunshine for a little while and spotted 3 turtles, one not much bigger than 1 inch.  When I lived at Claypool, there were always lots of baby turtles around in the spring, so it's fun to see them again.

We also were visited by 2 geese, so we are back into wildlife!

Our campsite was shaded, and pretty roomy, and we sat out in lawn chairs for a little while, which we don't do often enough.  Today was a good day -- we'll see what tomorrow brings.